Losing coolant 4.3L V6 volvo penta

Any chance you can just find a used one to get a few more seasons out of it? All of these forum guys obsessed with pods - gotta be a graveyard of inboard parts somewhere...
 
Max123 said:
Any chance you can just find a used one to get a few more seasons out of it? All of these forum guys obsessed with pods - gotta be a graveyard of inboard parts somewhere...
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I could try that but I think I may be going down the road of the obsessed pod guys lol. The motor and leg has 32 seasons on them and I’ve had them for 16 seasons. I think I’ve squeezed the years out of them pretty well 😊
 
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MRWood said:
I could try that but I think I may be going down the road of the obsessed pod guys lol. The motor and leg has 32 seasons on them and I’ve had them for 16 seasons. I think I’ve squeezed the years out of them pretty well 😊
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32 seasons is pretty hard to argue with - definitely doesn't owe you a penny. Strip out the heat exchanger and run raw water cooling until it rusts to pieces.
 
ship happens said:
It is very common on old equipment. Usually it will be one or a few tubes that leak. that pipe plug on the top there is a zinc. maintianing that zinc helps, however heat exchangers do fail over time. if you take the end caps off you will see how its built. the tubes are pressed in. Some tubes get holes in them but most of the time they leak at the seams where the tubes are pressed in. The only repair is to solder the tube closed, deleting the tube entirely. In which case will not effect performace. Your allowed to delete a few tubes.

Most likely its the heat exhchanger if your not finding coolant in the bilge. Only other thing it could be is the head gasket. In which case normally you would have other engine symptoms. Its easy to have the heat exchanger tested
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Just discovered another clue which points away from heat exchanger issue. Just noticed a creamy goop outside of the spark arrester/air filter where the pcv hose attaches. Took the hosing and pcv valve off and had creamy residue in it. The creamy residue was on both pcv valve and hoses. The oil on the dipstick looks clear though. I’m guessing head gasket leakage but not sure. Could be risers also?
 
Would have to do a leakdown test to identify the actual state of the engine and head etc. Typically if the engine oil is water/coolant free then there is no head gasket issue.

Just get that exchanger tested. It's cheap to test and repair.
 
Gunked up PCV wouldn't necessarily indicate head gasket failure. Some engines just have a poor crankcase venting design and they goop up. Saabs we infamous for this, Audi 1.8T, etc, etc. In my experience, engines with lower oil sump capacity are particularly prone to this. Likewise, if you aren't getting it up to temp and running short haul trips, the oil doesn't get hot enough to evaporate any moisture, and get rid of it via PCV - you just end up with oil/water mix condensing in the PCV system. Lastly, synthetic oil is much more resistant to gunking up.

There are a few different ways to diagnoses head gasket failure:
- Oil in coolant, or bubbling coolant (combustion gases getting into the coolant system)
- Water in oil / milkshake oil
- Pull plugs and see if a few of them look spotless (moisture in combustion chamber can steam clean the plugs)
 
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